Care in Mind began when our founder, Dr David Kingsley, was working as a Consultant Psychiatrist in a Tier 4 CAMHS Low Secure inpatient unit. Young people were working hard to process complex trauma and to reduce their risk profiles in hospital. However when they were ready for discharge they remained fragile and in need of high levels of support to help them to sustain their progress in the community and continue their journeys toward recovery. Young people would often deteriorate on discharge and be readmitted into hospital. Dr Kingsley realised that there were few if any providers offering residential placements for young people with complex mental health needs who could offer a level of intensity of support that could meet this need – and could reverse the significant harm caused by delayed discharges, re-admissions to hospital, lost teenage years and and the disappearance of hope.
Initially, a group of multi-disciplinary mental health colleagues led by Dr Kingsley began to offer an outreach service to residential providers to provide a level of support for both young people and residential teams that could sustain placements for young people with high levels of complexity and risk. Over time it became clear that Care in Mind needed to provide residential homes for young people, in order that we could provide a truly seamless service that crossed boundaries between residential and mental health care.
We opened our first home in 2014, Lyndhurst in West Yorkshire, and the rest, as they say, is history!